Did they forget there was such a thing as consequences? Who can tell?

We would not if we could describe any further the occurrences of the
evening. It was past twelve when the six girls, tired, frightened,
locked out of the house by every door, found themselves--sleigh,
horses, bells, boys, all gone--shivering under the back balcony, as
forlorn a set of beings as the calm moon shone upon.

It was not for some time that Myra Peters remembered the window out of
which she had clambered. If that were unlocked here might be an
entrance that at this time of night would be wholly unobserved.

"But if it is?" asked the most frightened of the girls.

"Julia Abbey, you are always croaking," scolded shaking Mamie Smythe.
"The next time I ask you to go anywhere, I shall know it!"

"I--I hope you never will; it--it don't pay," sobbed Julia.

One of the girls had tried the window, found it still unlocked, and
had partly raised it. Now the question was, who would be the first one
to go in? It was Mamie Smythe who felt the responsibility of the ride,
and therefore the necessity of putting on a brave face, and taking
whatever consequences followed.

"I'll go, girls," she said. "Some of you lift me."

Mamie was small and light; it was not a difficult thing to do, as she
clung to the window-sill, and in a moment she had disappeared. Then
her head came out of the window.

"All right, girls," she said in a whisper. "Come quickly, and as soon
as you are in go softly right to your rooms. It's still as a mouse
here."

Now there was a pushing among the girls, not who should venture as
before, but who might go. They were too cold and alarmed not to be
selfish, and their struggle for precedence delayed them, until Mamie
impatiently called the one to come by name.

In this way, one after another safely entered, crept to their rooms
unheard and unseen, leaving the tell-tale bit of dress hanging on the
hook, and forgetting to fasten the window behind them.

If they had been all together in one corridor, their pale faces and
poor recitations might, at least, have excited the teachers' suspicion
that something was wrong; but, as it was, it only seemed to be an
event of not very uncommon occurrence that some one should come into
the class poorly prepared.

It now wanted ten days of Thanksgiving. Only a few of the
pupils,--those who had come from Mexico, Texas, Oregon, San Francisco,
and other distant places,--but had all their plans ma